


Revelation in the Light of Day

by bonerthatiusedtoknow



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Angst with a Happy Ending, Crimes & Criminals, Dark, Explicit Sexual Content, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Torture, Trauma
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2013-02-20
Updated: 2013-03-29
Packaged: 2017-11-29 22:48:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 17,297
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/692444
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bonerthatiusedtoknow/pseuds/bonerthatiusedtoknow
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>He thinks Dean’s eyes might twinkle with something like mischief for a fraction of a second before he stands, trailing his fingertips over Castiel’s knee as he passes, and slinks up to press in close behind him. Day old stubble scratches teasingly against his cheek and a scorching palm rests against the side of his neck. “Nah, I just like having you at my mercy.” (Or where a Russian human trafficker by the name of Alastair needs information from Castiel and Dean is the interrogator.)</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. 1

Cold

Bone jarring, teeth-rattling cold. Surrounding him, enveloping him, suffocating him. 

He can’t breathe, can’t move, can’t feel anything but the ice in his bones. His eyes are open, but the darkness is consuming and impenetrable, a tangible darkness like he’s never known, an impossible, binding darkness. Somewhere in the back of his mind, he wonders if this is what it feels like to be dead.

His other senses awaken hazily, muted and slow like he’s under an ocean of freezing water, a jumble of detached feelings and stimuli without any real purpose or meaning. The answer floats around inside his muddled brain, bobs a few times just out of reach as he grazes its surface, and he can just make out it’s outline like a fuzzy mockery, but enough that he can grasp at it. And there it is. 

Drugged. 

Because he’d had his appendix taken out as a teenager and it’s not the exact same experience, but he remembers the misplaced senses as he came out of the anesthesia. 

His hearing registers first, faint but _there_. A hollow whistle blows somewhere behind him like the low F of the flute he played in high school. And there’s the wet, swoop-plop of water droplets echoing around the—well, wherever he is—like a metronome. It sounds big, spacious at the very least, and empty. Abandoned maybe. He cringes inwardly at the cliché of his circumstances and then at the distinct smell of disinfectant and sterility that wafts over him. It reminds him of a hospital, but he doubts a hospital would be permitting leaky pipes and a drafty window in a patient’s room. Then again, it _is_ LA, so there’s really no telling. He can’t feel his arms, or rather he can’t feel where they should be because eventually he realizes they’re pulled tight behind his back, not at his sides, and something hard and cold presses into his wrists, encasing them.

Suddenly, color floods his vision, globs of gray, beige, green and gold adding up to absolutely nothing identifiable or distinct, until they slowly harden, gaining depth and definition, and form shapes. _A_ shape. 

“Good, you’re awake.” The figure, a man, he thinks offhandedly, grows larger, swelling in his line of sight until there’s nothing left but the vague shadow of a face. “You’re a difficult man to find, Castiel.” Oh, that’s his name. It’s a rather odd statement to make, though, because Castiel isn’t aware he had been hiding. Or looked for. Or that random strangers knew his name. Or why, for that matter. 

“My apologies, Mister…?” he rasps. The words feel foreign in his mouth, his tongue too heavy to maneuver them just right, and his voice can barely be heard by his own ears, but he can make out the low rumble of amusement inches from him so his captor must catch them. 

“You can call me, Dean.” Castiel can make out some details now, it’s not perfect, something like an image that’s been blown up too large, lacking focus; but he can see that “Dean’s” eyes are green, that his skin is a paled bronze, and that his hair is a golden brown that reminds Castiel strangely of sunshine and late summers. 

“Is that your real name?” He doesn’t know why he asks, other than that he’s honestly curious because maybe if it’s a fake name he has a greater chance of surviving this whole ordeal. And partly just because he wonders how honest this criminal is, if there are lines he doesn’t cross.

Another snort of laughter and the screech of metal against concrete, then Dean is moving, dragging a chair with him, which he straddles the back of, a few feet directly in front of Castiel. “I guess you’ll never know.” A smirk teases the corner of his lips, cocky and mocking but also, Castiel thinks, genuinely amused. 

His vision is nearly back to normal now, and he can pick out the hard edge of Dean’s jaw, the bulge of his biceps beneath the fabric of his faded leather jacket—odd attire for a kidnapper— and the steel beneath the initial arrogant bravado flash in his eyes. But Castiel doesn’t miss the almost feminine plush of his mouth or the smattering of freckles over the bridge of his nose, and it makes Dean seem younger, softer. Somehow he knows it would be a fatal mistake to assume either of those things. “I assume you’ve brought me here for a purpose?” Castiel asks, and there’s a little more bite, more sarcasm infused in it than he had originally intended, more than is probably recommended in hostage type situations, but he can’t take it back. Doesn’t really want to.

‘Here’ is, in fact, a big ,empty spacious room. He isn’t sure what it used to be, but it’s made of concrete and pipes and windows high up on the walls that allow rays of sunlight to serve as the light source. Which proves highly ineffective because it’s mid-winter and late in the afternoon, as far as he can tell from the dusky pink of the sky outside. It doesn’t explain why he’s so cold though, because it doesn’t get cold enough to make his toes go numb and his ears ring in LA, even in his apparent state of undress—at some point he’s become aware of the fact that he’s clad in only the thin undershirt and boxers he went to bed in. “A regular Sherlock Holmes, aren’t you?” Dean quips, but leans forward on his folded arms resting on the top of his chair, pursing his lips and twirling a blade between two fingers. A desirable alternative to a fist in the mouth at any rate. “I need information about your sister and you’re going to be a dear and give it to me.”

A staggering surge of fury rushes, red-hot and consuming, over him. Castiel’s fingers brush against the icy metal of what he assumes are handcuffs binding his wrists behind the back his chair, as he runs his options over in his head. He nods slowly, humming a feigned sound of contemplation to go with his strategically thoughtful expression. “Or?”

Dean’s smirk twists into something more malicious, hard and just a little frightening. Castiel doesn’t let the emotion flicker across his face. “Do you enjoy having all of your fingers and toes, Castiel?” The tone is deceptively light.

“I doubt it will matter if I spend much longer in this chair, my feet went numb some time ago. I believe frostbite is a very real danger in this case.” Castiel’s voice plateaus. He thanks every divine power he can think of that he manages to stay the tremor of cold that threatens to overtake his body. His captor’s face twists into a look of bemusement before a little bark of disbelief slides past his lips, and he shakes his head stating that smartass remarks like that usually earn someone a knife in the jugular. “Ah, and yet, here I sit, jugular intact.” Dean hums deep in the back of his throat something assenting, and lifts himself from his seat, stalking forward to drop down into a crouch at his feet. When he looks up, Castiel fights back the reflex to shrink under the full intensity of Dean’s gaze; he won’t give him the satisfaction. The knife in Dean’s hand catches a weak ray of light from the window, glinting cruelly as it slips between calloused fingers. 

“It would be a shame,” he starts, and a sick shiver races up Castiel’s spine as the cool steel makes contact with his bare thigh, “to scar up this pretty, smooth skin of yours, but I will if I have to.” The apex of the blade just barely grazes him as it passes up his leg and then trails over his stomach to rest just over where his heart is hammering in his chest. “But maybe you need a little convincing.” The tip presses into him for a moment before he’s abruptly about ten times colder and his shirt hangs in tatters on either side of his body, bearing his abdomen for Dean’s scrutinizing eyes. But he can’t even think about his vulnerability right now because his brain is suddenly aware of a sharp, stinging pain cutting into his flesh, of the hot flood of liquid running down his chest and pooling in his bellybutton. He hisses, teeth clenching over his bottom lip to hold in the groan resting on the back of his tongue. 

The gash isn’t fatal, isn’t even very deep, but he l knows instinctively that it’s only because Dean chose for it not to be, not because he couldn’t make it so. “Where is your sister, Castiel?” Dean’s voice blows hot and rough against the shell of his ear. Maybe he’s broken though, he muses, when the feel of his hot blood against his stomach does more to spur on his anger than his terror.

“Where are _we_?” More of a demand than a question. There’s absolutely no way they’re still in California. His brain is one jumble of thoughts and fears and nonsensical phrases he can’t place, and he doesn’t know what’s in control of his mouth right now because it sure isn’t him.

Dean sits back on his haunches, eyeing Castiel speculatively and says West Virginia. “I asked you a question.” The flat edge of the blade runs idle circles on his calf, an ever present warning; he wonders if Dean realizes that he’s doing it or if it comes naturally to him.

He disregards the question in favor of biting out a, “You transported me across the _country_ in my underwear? For what reason exactly?” Metal digs into his calf, meeting a small bit of resistance before it sinks through with a ‘pop’ and drags a shallow line up the side of Castiel’s leg. Aware of it then. To his credit, Castiel only flinches with a sharp inhale and raises an eyebrow.

“Answer the goddamned question.” The evergreen darkens to a murky, dirty-swamp color as Dean’s eyes narrow at him.

“All take and no give, Dean?” he taunts through clinched teeth, “That doesn’t seem like a very fair trade.”

“The trade is letting you live.”

“That threat may be losing some of its panache, no?” Cruelty saturates the sneer playing on his lips as he stands and stalks over somewhere just out of Castiel’s peripheral vision. 

"Has anyone ever told you that you complain an awful fucking lot for someone being threatened at knife point?" 

"Strangely enough I can't say I've made it a habit to be threatened at knife point, so no." When Dean comes back, he’s toting an unmarked, white jug in one hand, a water bottle in the other, and wearing a mask that covers his nose and mouth. It’s sparks more than a little nervousness. Dean uncaps the jug, dangling it beside Castiel’s head. The fumes burn his nostrils. 

Dean raises an eyebrow like a challenge; Castiel never could back down from a challenge. He glares, setting his jaw with stubborn resistance, his mouth firmly closed in a tight line. The container tips at a forty-five degree angle, spilling colorless, viscous liquid down his right shoulder in a fizzy hiss as it makes contact. Castiel’s head flings back with his cry of agony, as his skin reddens and whelps under the burn of acid. He can feel his eyes swell with tears at the agitation the fumes are causing, like chopping an onion times twenty, and he hates that he looks like he’s crying.

“Phosphoric acid,” Dean says, watching it drip down Castiel’s arm with detached fascination. “No permanent damage but fuck does it ever burn, huh?”

“ _Fuck you_ ,” Castiel snarls, voice pitched low with the itchy tightness in his throat.

Dean grins wide to bare white teeth and pointed canines, and winks. “Maybe later, big boy,” he leers and splashes a few more searing ounces over Castiel’s pinked bicep. Castiel bites down on his bottom lip so hard he’s afraid it draws blood. Dean demands to know where his sister is and receives no answer, Castiel taking to fixing a steely, blue glower firmly on Dean’s face. He shrugs and douses his knife in acid then flicks it lightning quick across the skin stretched over Castiel’s ribs.

Castiel’s resistance isn’t a match for Dean’s skilled, nimble fingers and the practiced flick of his wrist as he continues to carve lines into tender flesh beneath his blade. A wail punches out of him, his nails biting crescent moon shaped indentions into his palm as his hands form fists. Then Dean’s pulling back again and wiping his knife on the rag at his feet. “Where is your sister?” he asks again, looking pointedly at the jug next to Castiel’s chair. 

His eyelids squeeze shut for a second as he takes in a solid breath, and informs Dean that he has many brothers and sisters. “Is there one in particular you’re interested in, or would you like for me to just start with a recap of Rachel’s birth and work my way down?”

Dean snorts and moves back to his chair, drawing it close enough that their knees brush. “ _Anael_ ,” he sneers, “But you already knew that, didn’t you?” 

“I had an inkling,” Castiel concedes, watching as Dean uncaps the water bottle and lifts it up over to his whelped shoulder. “But I haven’t had contact with Anael in several years, I don’t know anything that will be of use to you.” He isn’t sure he has feeling in his extremities anymore; they feel like dead weight, too numb to even be cold now. But he feels the cool water washing over his burn and dripping onto the floor before Dean moves to flush out the wounds on his abdomen. It still hurts, hot and stinging and raw, but it feels like the after effects of a burn rather than the actual sizzling corrosion of his skin.

Eyes narrow at him. “You expect me to believe that?”

“Perhaps not,” he shrugs against his constraints, “Nevertheless, it’s the truth. We had a…falling out before I shipped out the second time. I haven’t spoken to her since.” Darkness has fallen over them much faster than he anticipated, creeping into the corners and outskirts of the room. It makes him anxious—well, more so. “Is allowing me to slowly freeze to death another one of your methods of persuasion?” Castiel’s lip curls up over his teeth at the words in his mouth.

He thinks Dean’s eyes might twinkle with something like mischief for a fraction of a second before he stands, trailing his fingertips over Castiel’s knee as he passes, and slinks up to press in close behind him. Day old stubble scratches teasingly against his cheek and a scorching palm rests against the side of his neck. “Nah, I just like having you at my mercy.” Adrenaline courses through Castiel’s veins, surging into every inch of his body like liquid fire because he’s furious, and uncomfortable, and completely fucking petrified. This man has drugged him, transported him half naked to the other side of the country and left him to elements—with a tangible possibility of frost bite hanging over his head—cuffed him to a chair, and burned and sliced into to him like it was nothing. Like _he_ was nothing, with absolutely no remorse, smirking and threatening every step of the way. And now he's added this new element, this inherently sexual element, one more thing to intimidate him with, one more method of control. 

“Then by all means, what are a few missing limbs for your amusement?” The answering chuckle is smooth and hushed against his skin. 

“I can’t let you go until you tell me the truth, Cas,” Dean murmurs. The nickname shouldn’t render him so startled, it’s not like he hasn’t heard it before—once or twice by his brother Gabriel, a few times by others in his unit, or his cousin Balthazar who favored “Cassie,” much to his displeasure—but the fact that this man is calling him that, shakes him. It feels personal, familiar, just the slightest bit invasive, and it catches him completely off guard. “I got a boss who doesn’t take no for an answer.” Something chilly and metallic trails the ridge of his collarbone, the knife—still wet from where Dean must have rinsed it off—he speculates; his eyes are clamped shut and he can’t make them open up enough to look.

Castiel demands to know who Dean is taking orders from, but his words crescendo into a yelp, the delicate skin just beneath his clavicle opening up like a Spring bloom beneath the added pressure. Rivets of fresh blood trickle down his skin, painting it crimson, and Castiel’s nostrils flair under the onslaught of iron and something sweet. “I don’t think you understand how this works, sweetheart. I have the weapons, I ask the questions.” Dean must take Castiel’s silence as an affirmative because he mumbles a pleased, “Good,” and then all the heat and pressure of his body is gone, his footsteps echoing across the cement somewhere behind Castiel. He wonders if Dean is purposely allowing himself to be heard, if the stealth he might usually possess has been discarded on Castiel’s behalf. He wonders why, and what difference that knowledge makes to him. 

When Dean draws close again, there’s a tense silence where Dean is behind him but not speaking or breathing or moving, and Castiel thinks this must be it. He’s going to start losing fingers now; Dean is going to chop them off. Or kill him. Neither prospect eases his apprehension.

Warmth steals over him, thick and glorious. His eyes flutter shut again, afraid if he opens them the feeling with be gone and he’ll be lost once more to the frigid mountain air. Then there’s a pressure he can’t quite grasp on his feet and the creek of Dean’s weight sinking back into his chair. Castiel wills his eyelids apart. 

The first thing he notices is the blanket wrapped around his shoulders and tucked in around him to hold it in place. The next, is the cobalt blue fuzzy socks adorning his feet. He feels his eyebrows raise just the tiniest bit at the socks, his head tilting in silent question at Dean who just watches him blankly. 

“My brother is a huge fucking girl,” he says, nodding at the socks, like that explains everything: life and the universe, where babies come from, and why Pluto is no longer a planet. 

“I see.” He doesn’t, not really. But his skin is tingling in that annoying way that means blood is flowing back into it, so he doesn’t even care enough to question Dean’s random act of kindness. If that’s even what it is.  
“Do you?”

Castiel shakes his head. “No.”

Dean shrugs. “Okay, let’s try something else. Tell me about yourself, Castiel, that’s a weird name. What’s that about?”

He imagines he can melt Dean with his eyes and despairs when it turns out that he can’t. “I’m sure you noticed all of my siblings and I possess biblical names. Castiel is the angel of Thursday and orphaned children; I was born on a Thursday.”

To Dean’s credit, he doesn’t look anymore befuddled than the average person does after hearing the same explanation. “Bible thumpers, huh? Hey, you think if I rang a bell you’d get your wings?” A grin is stretched wide and smug across Dean’s face; the grin of someone completely and utterly pleased with themselves. For what, Castiel doesn’t know.

“I…don’t understand that reference.”

“What—seriously? Clarence, wings, you know,” he earns a blank stare for his efforts. “Come _on_. Nothing? Fuck, and I thought I had a shitty childhood.”

“Is this the part where we swap heartfelt stories and I’m so taken with your humanity that I give in and tell you everything you want to know?” he snips, the still present sting of his burns heavy and very much present in his mind.

Dean shrugs, a smile crinkling in the corner of his eyes. “I never agreed to swapping, but the rest sounds good, yeah.” Castiel rolls his eyes, saying that Dean is wasting his time but Dean is unmoved. “What’s your favorite color?”

Castiel glares. “I’m not playing this game with you.” That is until Dean threatens to pick up where they left off last, and he says, “Gray.”

“What the hell kind of favorite color is _gray_?” Incredulity raises Dean’s voice an octave. It shouldn’t be so satisfying.

“Mine,” he says, “Why do you need my sister, Dean?”

Just like that, the light is gone, snatched away in one fail swoop, replaced by darkness and steel. “I don’t get paid to ask why, I just get the information I’m told to get.”

“Asking my favorite color was a necessary means of obtaining information?” He shouldn’t push it, but Castiel has never really known when to back out gracefully; it’s an acknowledged personality flaw. Dean ignores the question in favor of repeating his own, that teasing lilt to his voice has dropped away completely now, leaving behind nothing but hard, unflinching stoicism. Dean is done playing. “I told you; I don’t know,” Castiel says

“And I said you were full of shit, enough of the rerun.” And Castiel very nearly spills his entire life story to appease him, willing to say anything and everything Dean wants to know because his tone is steely and authoritative and the very nature of it commands obedience. He thinks Dean could probably take control of an entire country with nothing but his voice at his disposal. 

He manages to curb his tongue, but barely. “If you won’t listen to the truth, I don’t know what to say to you.”

“Well,” Dean growls, swooping in smoothly to wrap one large hand around Castiel’s neck, thumb pressing threateningly against his windpipe, “You better think of something real quick.” White teeth peak out from the hateful, sour twist of his lips. It reminds Castiel of a wild animal that’s been injured and backed into a corner, a wolf maybe. His heart is nearly beating right out of his chest, and this time it is definitely all fear, because there’s a pretty good chance that he’ll die here in an abandoned building somewhere in West Virginia at the hands of a possibly psychopathic criminal. He isn’t surprised when Dean’s blade traces his cheek bone, nicking the skin just enough to sting but not to draw much blood. “Because I’ve carved up little girls a third of your age for less. I can make you hurt, Cas, make you bleed. I can bring you to the brink; you’ll think you’re dying, probably even wish for it, and when you’re begging for me to just put you out of your misery, to make it stop, I’ll bandage you up and start over.” Truth rings out in every word; every single syllable that flows from Dean’s mouth. Looking at him now, Castiel doesn’t know how he ever, for a second, entertained the thought of him looking even remotely soft. 

Until this moment, Castiel had only been afraid of dying, of rotting in an unnamed grave on a mountain somewhere, never to be found; now, he realizes it would be a mercy from the torture that could await him. He feels the beginning of a plea forming on his tongue, taking shape and meaning, but it is not what comes out. “You don’t want to.”

It startles Dean enough that he rears back a few inches to catch Castiel’s own stunned, cerulean gaze, his eyebrows furrowing in some undecipherable mix of confusion, admiration, and contempt. “You honestly think you’re more to me than a paycheck?”

It’s too late to backtrack now, and Castiel isn’t sure he could even if he tried. Because Dean’s eyes had flashed before he spoke, some unnamed emotion, Castiel doesn’t know which, can’t read Dean well enough for that, but somehow he knows his first statement held at least partial truth. It spurs him on. “Yes.”

“Yeah? What tipped you off, when I took my knife to your leg or your chest? The acid on your skin? My hand around your throat? Maybe this?” The air rushes out of him in one big whoosh and a groan of pain, the muscles in his stomach folding in around the fist in his gut. Castiel can’t breathe, can’t make his lungs suck in more air, and he feels like he’s drowning, his head dizzy and oxygen deprived. Weight presses into his lap, as legs straddle his hips, and teeth scrape against his earlobe. “You don’t mean anything to me, Cas,” he hears through the fog, “Not a goddamned thing.”

“Maybe not,” he pants. It comes out broken and half-whispered but at least his diaphragm has stopped spasming enough to let him breathe again. “But you still don’t want to do it. If you wanted to kill me, I’d already be dead. The thought is eating you up inside. You think if maybe you scare me enough, if you threaten me enough, I’ll tell you everything and you won’t have to do it. You’re praying you won’t.”  
Fingers thread tightly in his hair and use it to jerk his head back with an audible snap. “Shut the fuck up.”

But he doesn’t, barreling on with reckless abandon; at this point he really doesn’t have much else to lose. “You don’t have to do this. It’s just us here, just you and me, no one will ever know. I don’t have the information you want, doing this will get you nothing but nightmares.” He’s grasping at straws now, throwing out anything he can think of, something to tip Dean off the edge. “You have a brother, Dean. Would he want this for you?”

Then Dean’s hand is on his throat again, but it isn’t a teasing warning this time. It’s got him in a vice-like grip, squeezing, crushing, and scorching. His skin feels too tight, his face filling with blood and making it feel too full, too heavy. “I said,” Dean snarls, “Shut. The fuck. Up.” And just as Castiel’s sure his eyes are going to pop right out his head and roll across the floor, the hand is gone and he’s choking, gasping, and panting into the brisk winter air that’s too cold against his burning face. “I should slit your fucking throat right now, you know that?”

Dean throws himself up and across the room in record time. His hands fist in the short hairs of his crew cut, tugging and pulling as he paces. He’s mumbling to himself, words Castiel can’t quite grasp from this distance; but he can pick out the undertones of fury in the drop of Dean’s pitch and the tense set of his shoulders. Spinning abruptly on his heels, Dean stalks back toward him, purpose and renewed confidence in his steps. It seems an appalling injustice for sin to be so physically appealing.

Hot breath blows across Castiel’s face, and he knows he should be annoyed by it, but can only feel bewilderment as Dean scowls darkly at him and says, “One wrong move, Cas. One, and I’ll cuff you naked to a tree and leave you to freeze to death. Do you understand me?” Castiel nods, because he has never been a fan of the cold, not ever, and when freezing to death is part of an ultimatum, the other option will always be chosen.

Their eyes meet for a long moment that should be tenser than it is and significantly less at the same time, before Dean cants his head forward slowly. A flash of silver sparks from the corner of his eye and for second he’s afraid he’s going to be cut into some more, but then Dean tugs at the handcuffs securing Castiel’s wrists and with a click he’s free from them. “I mean it, Cas. Don’t even think about it.” He doesn’t. Well, he does, actually. Think about it that is, but his feet are still half-numb and one of his calves is throbbing and if he tried he wouldn’t get very far and he has no doubt that Dean would make good on his promise of leaving him to freeze to death tied to a tree. So he just shakes his head and jumps when the shrill sound of an alarm goes off by his ear. 

Or a phone, as it turns out. “Sir.” Dean’s voice is tense and stilted like he hasn’t heard it thus far. “No, I—” There’s a pause where Castiel can here the buzz of another voice in the phone speaker. A frown that’s part grimace twists Dean’s face as he listens, casting a fleeting look at Castiel before he says, “Yes sir. I don’t think he knows anything, I was going to take him—” It’s fascinating to watch the emotion flit across his face: shame, incredulity, fear, determination and back again. “Yes sir. I’ll call you if I find out anything before then.” The call ends with a furrowing of Dean’s brows and a cut off sigh. He bends to slice the rope binding Castiel’s legs to the chair and jerks him upright from beneath his arm, balancing him when he stumbles on shaky legs, before slapping the cuffs back on. “Let’s go.”

“Where are we go—”

“Let’s go.” Castiel surveys him for a moment then lets Dean direct him clumsily through the snow, soaking his borrowed socks, to a dark vehicle outside. They travel along the winding stretch of pavement—up up up—and Castiel allows the blast of the heater to warm his stiff muscles and the silence to sooth his raw nerves.

***

Castiel doesn’t fall asleep; as much as he wants to, he knows to do so would an act of extreme naivety and neglect on his part—to leave himself so thoroughly vulnerable would be a grave mistake even if he can’t do much to defend himself right now. So, he doesn’t allow himself to fade into unconsciousness, but he drifts in a stilted sense of awareness, letting the aching in his bones and the sting of his cuts and burns dwindle somewhere in the background. Until the car turns off the road, headlights flashing over the snow in the pitch black as it maneuvers into a clearing of trees. Dean has brought him out here to dispose of him after all? Well, he can’t honestly say he’s too overly astonished by it at any rate. Then the lights flash over a small cabin nestled in the thicket, and Dean rolls up beside it and turns off the car. Oh. 

He mumbles out something to the effect of ‘home, sweet home,’ and climbs out the car to pull Castiel from the other side—who comes willing because he’ll be damned if he stays in the car and gives up the possibility of a fireplace or heat source of some kind. 

The house doesn’t have electricity, Castiel soon learns. Dean goes through lighting lanterns and candles like they’ve suddenly been transported back in time a century or so; helps in staying off the radar, he figures. At least there’s a fireplace, rough, gray cuts of stone and white mortar, at the back wall of what passes for a bedroom. “Do you live here?” Castiel asks at last, eyes flitting around the room. 

Dean snorts and fishes a red and white box from his pocket, “No. Boss has a lot of places like this at his disposal. I like this one.” He flips the lid and pulls a cigarette from it, placing it between his lips before striking a match and holding the little flame at the tip. For some reason it doesn’t strike Castiel as odd that he doesn’t use a lighter instead. Dean releases a little groan of relief as wisps of white smoke curl from the tip and he takes a long drag.

“Those kill.” 

Dean observes him critically with a lifted eyebrow. “Do I look like someone who’s going to live long enough to worry about lung cancer?”

“Secondhand smoke increases the chance of heart problems or lung cancer by twenty to thirty percent.”

A grin lifts the corners of Dean’s mouth. “Yeah?” He steps too close, crowding Castiel against wall, and pulls the cigarette from his lips, blowing a long stream of smoke into Castiel’s face. “How inconsiderate of me.” Castiel attempts to set him on fire with the power of his glare, and Dean snickers before stepping away. “Sit down or something,” he says. Much to Castiel’s relief, the order is followed by Dean crossing the distance of the room, and stooping down to get the fire going.

The bed is tiny, mattress thin, moth-eaten and worn, though Castiel doubts it was much better off when it was new. It only sits a few inches off the ground and lacks a box spring to separate the mattress from the metal bed frame; the ‘head board’ is a rusted metal arch welded between two equally rusted, slightly bent rods topped with nondescript knobs that seem to serve absolutely no purpose at all. All in all, the floor probably shares an identical level of comfort. Castiel tries to nudge the blanket tighter around him as he sits at its edge, it serves almost completely ineffective without the use of his hands, and watches Dean stack logs and light kindling. It’s not very likely and he knows it, but he imagines ways to get the keys from Dean’s pocket once he’s asleep, stealing the car and hightailing it out of here as fast as he can. He doesn’t know where he is, or where the closest town might be but it doesn’t matter because the possibility of getting lost is significantly better than the threat of death hanging over his head. 

A little outburst of triumph catches his attention again. Dean pushes himself off the floor and stalks back towards Castiel, a decent fire lighting the crevices of the fireplace and the corners of the room, untouched by the lanterns hanging by the entrance. The lack of electricity and pathetic excuse for a bed aside, the cabin is actually kind of cozy. It’s small and scantily furnished but the candles and the fire give it an otherworldly glow, and the wood serving as the walls and flooring is dark and smooth, pretty and sturdy looking. Without knowing what the other hideaways might look like, Castiel could still objectively see why this one might be his favorite.“You should probably get some sleep or something.” An alien emotion colors Dean’s tone, because he’s heard smugness, anger, disbelief, amusement, and anxiety, but not whatever this is and he doesn’t understand. Castiel narrows his eyes at him suspiciously, trying to pry the truth right from Dean’s mind. “Just—trust me, you’re going to need it.”

Castiel barks out a laugh, sharp and cold to his own ears. “Trust you, right. Because you’ve given me so many reasons to do that?” Even as he says it, he feels the fatigue suffocating him, screaming at him to just give in, but he can’t. Regardless of everything he’s too proud to give in, and he’s afraid of where that level of vulnerability will leave him, even with this Dean, who is somehow different than the one in the warehouse. Whose shoulders are more relaxed and the lines less prominent on his face, and the cold edge in his voice melted away by the fire. It’s startling actually, how different this Dean is, after only a few minutes of observation he can see it so plainly, and doesn’t know how to reconcile the opposing images in his mind.

With a roll of his eyes, Dean spreads out across the bed, not entirely relaxed—like he’s ready for an attack at any given moment—but close to it. “Suit yourself, dude.” 

A beat and then, “Will you at least take these things off of me?” 

Dean doesn’t so much as spare him a polite glance when he shakes his head, lights another cigarette, and says, “Nope. Sorry, protocol.”

Castiel sighs long-sufferingly and slumps off the edge of the mattress and onto the floor, with his legs kicked out in front of him. Then because he can’t ignore it any longer he says, “Aren’t you going to question me some more?” A tense silence stretches out between them, interrupted only by the pop and crackle of the fire, and the soft inhale and exhales of their breathing, before Dean finally answers. 

“No.” One word, short and curt, with no further explanation whatsoever but there’s a story there, something he’s not saying. 

“You told him you didn’t think I knew anything.”

Dean sounds resigned when he responds, the bed squeaking as he pulls himself up into a sitting position. “You’re bound and determined to have this conversation, aren’t you?” But he doesn’t wait for the obvious answer before he starts in on what Castiel assumes will be a very long story. “Look, Cas,” he sounds the very epitome of worn out and given over, it’s a baffling picture to behold, “I told you I didn’t ask questions. I don’t get a say in what goes on; I get my assignment, I do what I’m told and I move on. It doesn’t matter what I think or what I want, okay? It doesn’t matter if I believe you or not, it doesn’t matter if I don’t want to bleed you like a stuck pig for answers. The only thing that matters is that I do my job because believe it or not, there are more important things at stake.” He recognizes the emotion now, understanding at once why he hadn’t before, because he’s witnessed it flash across Dean’s face momentarily but never to thoroughly saturating his tone: _shame_.

“What? Your paycheck?” he retorts sharply, regardless of the things Dean may or may not be facing, Castiel is still the victim here and he’s entitled to be irate. 

“Does it really matter? You’re here, and you’ll continue to be until I’m told otherwise, the reason doesn’t factor in.” Dean takes one last drag, before rubbing the cigarette on the wall and flicking it into the miniature trashcan across the room.

“Yes!” Castiel snaps, “It matters a whole fucking lot to me. You’ve spent the past few hours showing me in every single possible way that my thoughts and feelings and desires, that my fucking _life_ doesn’t matter, and the very least you could do right now is tell me why. Because it may not mean anything to you, but it does to me and I might not live to see tomorrow so I think at this point, my vote counts more.” And though Castiel holds a candle of hope that Dean will assure him that despite what’s gone down, he’s not going to die, he gets no such reassurance. Instead, Dean regards him with carefully blank eyes that flit around the angles of his face before flicking away and settling on the far wall. 

“My brother,” Dean says without further explanation, and Castiel doubts he can pull anymore from him, but it doesn’t matter because he doesn’t need anything else.

“You’re protecting him.” The shift of muscles clenching beneath the skin of Dean’s jaw is answer enough and Castiel nods. It doesn’t fix anything, it doesn’t make it okay, but at least he understands now; it’s more than he had before. “I think I want to sleep now.”

Dean clears his throat noisily and mumbles an, “Okay,” before pulling himself from the bed, and helps Castiel off of the floor. He releases one of Castiel’s wrists long enough to let him situate himself on the bed, then passes the free cuff around the rusty headboard rod closest to the wall and claps it back around his wrist, effectively securing Castiel’s arms over his head. So much for that escape plan. Dean blows out the lantern on his way out of the room, but hesitates just before stepping out. He turns, casting a look at Castiel over his shoulder. “Hey, Cas?”

“Yes?”

“In the morning, just… if you know anything at all, tell it first thing. At the very beginning.” He doesn’t say why or what he’s even referring too. He doesn’t have to.


	2. 2

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For some reason, I didn't realize the big chunk left out at the end of this chapter, so I'm adding that in. An actual update probably won't happen until Sunday or Monday maybe? Sorry! Midterms and stuff, you know?

Dreams are Castiel’s favorite part of sleeping; have been since before he was even able to grasp the concept. Sometimes he dreams of simple things: park benches and children and leaves lifting up from the ground to swirl together in the breeze. Other times he dreams of bright colors and warmth, or grand biblical battles he was told about as a child. But most times he dreams of flying high above the clouds with the great stretch of endless blue above him and enormous dark wings propelling higher and higher, until he’s barely a speck amongst the stars. 

Not this night. Tonight he dreams of arctic fire so cold it burns, with flames that give just enough light to see the massacre of broken bodies and slew of entrails. Tonight he dreams of chains and pools of blood and sharp, deafening screams of true agony that makes his eyes prickle and his heart clench tight. Tonight he dreams of warped, smirking demons and razor sharp, yellowed fangs and black smoke thick enough to choke the life right out of him. Tonight he dreams of hell. 

He welcomes the gentle touch at his hipbone shaking him awake. It’s still dark outside, just the slightest bit of light touching the cold navy blue of morning, so he knows he hasn’t been asleep very long. But he can still feel his wings shriveling, singeing and burning from the biting icy flames of his dream hell, can still feel demons tear at him, pulling away the feathers and clawing at his skin, and he decides he’s slept long enough. 

Dean stands at the side of the bed, watching him with arms crossed tightly over his chest and anxiety written into his face. “Wake up, Castiel.” His full name feels off somehow, but it’s too early to analyze such things.

“I’m awake,” he mutters, tugging on his bonds when he discovers he can’t sit upright. Dean doesn’t say anything as he leans over Castiel to free him from the bedpost. 

Castiel doesn't think, kicks out a foot that connects with a sound thump. Dean curses, backhands him sharply across the face before Castiel finds himself being tugged off the bed, out of the bedroom, across what passes for a living room—with a threadbare, tattered red couch, matching arm chair, and small wooden coffee table—and into another room he hadn’t noticed upon first entry into the cabin. It’s bare of any furniture or decoration, with the exception of four iron manacles mounted to the wall across from a window. He doesn’t ask what they’re for. “Dean,” he breathes, as he’s pushed into place, his bare back brushing the rough wood of the wall. Because it’s all he can make himself say, the only word his mouth allows him to form: a plea that won’t accomplish anything. He fights against the hold, kicking and bucking and wriggling away, knowing that he won’t get succeed, but also that he has to try regardless.

Dean takes the knee to his chin like a paper ball thrown at his face, and wrestles Castiel back against the wall. He takes pride in the rivet of blood trickling from the corner of Dean’s mouth as he locks the manacles around Castiel’s ankles and then his wrists. 

The snapping of twigs and crunch of leaves beneath tires outside wins Castiel’s attention though, panic racing in his chest and pounding in his ears as Dean pitches a fleeting glance out of the window. He steps toward Castiel now, holding his eyes purposefully like he’s trying to convey a message, and leans in whispering, “I’m sorry,” in his ear, then he’s bolting for the cabin door. Castiel can’t see what’s going on from where he is, but he can hear voices, two of them, conversing in the other room. He’s known it was coming since the phone call yesterday, but even so he finds he isn’t prepared for this. He hears the last thing Dean said to him before he went to sleep last night playing in his head and wishes he could obey it. Wishes it would make a difference. Castiel tries to memorize every detail of the room around him and the tints of orange and pink beginning to break across the sky with the rising of the sun, because this will probably be the last thing he’ll ever see. 

The man that enters in behind Dean sends chills down Castiel’s spine, spreading goose bumps over his arms, and raising the little hairs all over his body. He’s tall—taller than both Castiel and Dean—and painfully thin, with deep set, opaque-blue gray eyes that latch onto Castiel as soon he comes into view, and sharp cheek bones melting into a protruding rounded jaw that’s just the slightest bit crooked on one side. A smile plays across his razor sharp lips, but it’s just the opposite of friendly: the smile of a cat that’s just cornered a mouse with no route of escape. “Castiel Allen.” It comes out as a purr, sickly sweet, and there’s definitely an accent there that he can’t quite place—Russian maybe? Those dead eyes roam every inch of him with a fervor that makes Castiel nauseous, before they settle on his, and he grins maliciously and wide. “Dean,” he sings, eyes never straying from Castiel’s face, “I was under the impression that you already questioned him.”

Dean’s head droops down further, eyes glued firmly to the floor, “Yes sir.”

He hums contemplatively, slinking into Castiel’s space and tracing a skeletally-thin, index finger over the burn adorning his shoulder then down to run along the scabbed knife wounds across his ribs. Without warning, his fingernail digs into him, drawing blood from the reopened cuts and a surprised yelp from Castiel. Dean flinches but doesn’t look up. “I’m disappointed in you, Dean. Paper cuts will never get you what you want,” he sighs theatrically and smears his fingertip in Castiel’s blood, popping the digit into his mouth and sucking it clean with a delighted moan. “I’ll fix your mess _this_ time. Don’t let it happen again.”

“Alastair, I—” 

Alastair cuts him off, quick and deadly, his tone biting as he looks away from Castiel for the first time to fix Dean with a warning glower. “Don’t let it happen again.” Castiel can’t hear Dean’s responding “Yes sir,” though he knows it’s given, over the rush of blood in his ears, and the slow onset of claustrophobia as the walls around him crowd closer and closer. “Set up my things, Dean.” There’s a sadistic glint of pleasure in Alastair’s eyes when he says it, and Dean leaves the two of them alone in the room. “Well, aren’t you just _yummy_ ,” he says, tongue flicking out to trail along his lower lip. Castiel’s stomach flips. “Too old to be one of my boys, but…I might just bring you home and keep you for myself. How does that sound, Angel?”

“Go directly to hell,” he snaps, his hands balling into compact fists as Alastair snickers and cups Castiel’s cheek, brushing a thumb against his bottom lip.

“That’s no way to speak to authority.” His grin turns sour and menacing; ripping his hand away from the sharp teeth Castiel sinks into the venturing thumb hard enough to draw blood. Castiel’s face burns bright and hot at the striking of Alastair’s open palm against his cheek with a resounding ‘crack’ that’s sure to purple and bruise in no time. Blood pours over his tongue from the gaping hole left on the inside of his cheek by his bottom premolars, sweet, thick, metallic and repulsive. He spits a glob of pinked saliva that splats in the middle of Alastair’s hollowed cheek and dribbles down his chin. “I think,” he growls, gripping Castiel’s chin with bruising pressure, “that you need a lesson in respect, boy.”

“Yeah? Think you’re man enough to give it to me, Al?” Castiel asks, grinning a mocking, bloodstained, toothy smile. His eyes trail down Alastair’s body, dropping pointedly to the crotch of his jeans. “Because I have my doubts.”

“I’m going to enjoy tearing you apart.” And despite Castiel’s false bravado and the serene smile on his face, he believes him; it chills him to the bone. Dean enters the room again moments later, wheeling a cart of glinting metal and containers of questionable substances that Castiel would really rather not think about. Alastair positively _beams_ , bright and happy and proud, and pats Dean condescendingly on the cheek. “There’s a good boy.” Castiel thinks he sees a barely-there clinch in his jaw at the touch and wonders if Alastair sees it too. 

Alastair’s hand closes around the hilt of a six inch blade, serrated and sharpened to a razor’s edge with a cruel, hook-like curl at the tip, and holds it up to the light as if to inspect it. “Lovely, isn’t it?” he asks fondly. “There’s just something about a good knife, something about watching the flesh open up so prettily, so readily. A gun could never compare. Dean here has always preferred a scalpel; likes the precision I think, the control.”

“Are you going to use it or talk me into a coma?” Dean’s eyes nearly bug out of their sockets from his position a few feet behind Alastair. He shakes his head deliberately, purposefully, warning Castiel against the road he’s taking. 

But Alastair continues on as if he had never spoken, and strokes a finger along the shell of Castiel’s ear. “It’s only polite to allow you the opportunity to answer first. Where is your sister, Angel?”

“Checked up your ass recently?” Alastair’s knife is a flash of light out of the corner of his left eye before fire sings from his outer thigh and races up his flanks, the blade flaying layers of skin and muscle—far deeper than anything he had suffered at Dean’s hands. Castiel doesn’t even try to muffle his scream, and it registers shrill and sharp in his ears, cutting through the fog of pain clouding his other senses. 

“Oh, yes,” Alastair croons, “We’re going to cut that attitude right out of you.” And Castiel doesn’t hear anything else but the sound of his cries as Alastair lays into him again and again—even those become white noise, second to the feel of exposed nerves and bone and tendons—until the sun is high and bright, blinding reflected off the white snow, and there’s an alarming amount of blood puddled at his feet that he doesn’t notice. His head sags, chin pressed against his chest, as Alastair pulls away with bloodied hands and a filthy smile. Castiel doesn’t see either of them. He can’t force his eyelids open or block out the ringing in his ears, or the overpowering fatigue screaming at him to let go, to sleep, to succumb. 

“Where is your sister?” Metal strokes over his cheek, pushing sweat-soaked, dark hair back behind his ear. At first he doesn’t understand, the words are a buzz in his head without meaning, alien. Eventually, though, he makes sense of them, if vaguely.

It takes a few tries before he can take enough control over his mouth to not bite off his tongue trying to speak, and when he does he wills his head up to catch Alastair’s eyes. “Go fuck yourself.” The growl vibrating out from the back of Alastair’s throat may be a figment of Castiel’s questionable consciousness, because he lets his head droop again to conserve energy; regardless, he knows it’s bad when Alastair disappears from his, admittedly limited, line of vision.

Dean’s voice surprises him, Castiel had forgotten he was still in the room, had forgotten he even existed, the knowledge lost somewhere between one slash of Alastair’s blade and the next. “Alastair, he can’t take anymore! I really don’t think he—” He looks up in time to watch Dean fly across the room, slamming into the wall with a jarring thud, the right side of his face already purpling and swelling with the impact of a blow to his temple. 

“It was your _thinking_ that brought us here,” Alastair snarls, sparing him a fleeting glance before turning back to inspect Castiel. He grins, pleased and self-satisfied, at his handy work and draws his hands through the blood leaking over his stomach and smears it all the way to his face, gripping his jaw. “Although, you may have a point, not much good to me dead, is he?” he muses, “Tell me, Castiel, how many of me do you see?” Castiel doesn’t answer that he sees three and that Alastair’s parents are lucky they didn’t have triplets because wow there’s only so much repulsion one person can handle; he doesn’t answer at all. When Alastair drops his face he’s speaking to Dean again. “I have some…errands to run, I’ll be back at night fall. Stitch up the deepest ones so he doesn’t lose too much blood, I want him alive when I return.” He smirks, fingering a bruise left in the shape of his thumb on Castiel’s chin. “And leave him here; let him think really hard about his mistakes. I won’t be so lenient next time, pretty men are prettier sliced open and easily replaced.” 

He’s gone before Castiel finishes translating the words in his muddled brain, and at the slam of the front door Dean is suddenly there, crouching in front of him for a moment before crowding close. There’s a click and Castiel collapses wholly against him, muscles unresponsive and jelly-like, unable to sustain his weight without the help of the manacles. His head is spinning, probably the blood loss and it isn’t helped by Dean lifting him and transporting out of the room and into—well, somewhere else, Castiel closes his eyes to keep from puking up his guts and misses the shift of surroundings. He doesn’t register the hum for some time, and it’s even longer before he realizes it’s not a hum at all, but Dean speaking—to himself or to Castiel, he isn’t sure—pitched low and repetitive, a mantra. Dean pushes two white tablets into his mouth with a barely audible command to swallow. He does, not having the energy or desire to fight it, because the most pills can do to him is kill him and well, there are worse things.

Castiel doesn’t feel the needle entering and exiting his skin, tugging the abysmal edges of his wounds back together with a practiced hand and a gentleness that is lost on him because it’s not on the same plane as what he just experienced, what he’ll experience when Alastair returns for him. At some point he drifts, flying blissfully high in the clouds where pain is a vague, unobtainable concept somewhere at the back of his mind. It’s the most peace he’s felt in days and he relishes in it, lax and content against the shitty excuse for a mattress. Castiel whines pitifully at a sharp pinch resonating a couple inches beneath his collarbone that quickly fades again into the haze, but Dean reels him back in. “I’m sorry, I didn't mean to—I’m sorry.” He sounds so appallingly apologetic that it nearly drives Castiel to hysteric giggles. At the last minute, though, he manages to curb the urge, settling for a tiny disbelieving smile. 

“You’re sorry for _this_? Dean, in the past twenty-four hours, stitches aren’t even on my list of top ten painful experiences.” He doesn’t say it to be malicious or to prove a point because the only emotions Castiel can grasp right now are fatigue and amusement, anger is a distant notion far from his comprehension so it’s just a fact, an undisputable truth, but Dean takes it like a blow to the face with a pained wince.

“No, not for this, Cas. For—for everything.” Something very much like pleading saturates his tone and blazes in the brilliant, forest green of his irises, and even in his state Castiel can appreciate that for what it is. “You were right. Before. I never wanted… But I couldn’t—I didn’t want to keep you here for him. I’m so sorry.” Castiel doesn’t say anything to that. He’s tired and mostly numb, and instinctually he knows this is a topic that can’t be broached half asleep and pumped up on painkillers. Very good painkillers at that. So, he just lies there, staring at the ceiling and pretending he’s somewhere else entirely. 

Dean lets him. More than once he looks up to catch Dean hesitating, words at his lips, before he shakes his head and goes back to bandaging every visible sore on Castiel’s body, apologizing quietly when he’s rougher than he means to be. Castiel has a feeling Alastair would disapprove of Dean’s thoroughness in that respect, and wonders what he will say in his defense, but that too is a thought for another time. 

***

Talons rip at his skin and tear at his wings, leaving bloody gashes and patches of missing feathers in their wake, but he can’t stop moving, can’t stop running because if he does he’ll be too late. For every demon he destroys, there seems to be one more to take its place. Their numbers are endless, but he pushes through then, striking out in righteous fury with wings and fists and his skinny, silver sword. 

Finally, he pops through the other side of the screeching, gnashing mass, and there in the middle of the clearing is Dean. There’s a scalpel in his hand, sharp and lustrous in the dull light given off by the cold fire flaring up along the ground. He’s magnificent and fierce, bloody—though it’s apparent that it is not his own—and focused as he rips into the pleading, broken body of his seemingly female victim, or what’s left of her. Castiel doesn’t hear her agonized screams or see the gaping hole in her stomach where her skin should be, because this is what he’s here for. Somehow he knows this is it, but when he makes to venture toward Dean, suddenly it’s him on the rack. Suddenly, Castiel is the one writhing and bucking and screaming as Dean carves into his wings mercilessly, peeling back flesh and feathers, whittling away hollow bone. He tries to speak, tries to break away, but the restraints hold against his angelic strength and his tongue refuses to curl around the necessary syllables to free him. Then Dean catches his eyes and his hand pauses with the scalpel deep in muscle, and says, “Cas?”

Castiel wakes wheezing and breathless, his skin clammy with cold sweat, with Dean perched on the edge of the bed next to him, his face pinched worriedly. “Cas? Castiel? I have some more painkillers if you—”  
“Nightmare,” Castiel breathes, “Just a nightmare.” Though he doesn’t know if he says it to reassure Dean or himself. Maybe both. 

Dean doesn’t reply right away, and when he does, it lacks the mocking edge one might expect from a crony of someone like Alastair. But then Castiel is learning that Dean is nothing if not a contradiction to what one might originally assume. Instead, his captor nods and stretches out gingerly at his side, a scant few inches between their bodies. He pauses mouth perched to speak not actually moving to form the words, like he suddenly had second thoughts about it. Then the indecision melts away though he doesn’t quite meat Castiel’s eyes. “What was it about?”

“What's your name?” 

“Dean Winchester.” It rolls off his tongue so smoothly that it could only be a product of fervent practice or undisputable truth, and while Dean may be a great many terrible things, Castiel doesn’t think him a liar by nature; he doesn’t need to be. Something about the name nags at the back of brain though, and he isn’t yet lucid enough to identify the cause. 

“I dreamt of hell.” With the effects of the painkillers noticeably diminished, Castiel can only turn his head, not willing to risk jostling the mended gashes along his ribs, to watch the play of emotions on Dean’s face. Neither of them speaks for a time, but the silence doesn’t put him ill at ease; it’s almost comfortable. 

“You shouldn’t have egged him on that way.” It doesn’t sound reproachful, the way Dean says it though—almost proud, Castiel thinks—like a parent obligated to condemn certain behavior for the sake of it, though their heart isn’t really in it. 

The tiniest hint of a smile tickles the corner of Castiel’s mouth. “I was a soldier for nearly a decade, Dean. I’m not likely to roll over when the enemy orders it.”

It’s definitely pride he detects this time when Dean responds, which is more than a little staggering for Castiel. “No. No, I guess you’re not.” The mattress dips as Dean situates himself on his side, his head propped up by one large palm while the other fiddles with the frayed, white sheet. His eyes flicker up to catch Castiel’s, all clear, emerald-ringed irises and too-long eyelashes when he starts, “My dad was a Marine, before he married my mom.”

“You must be very proud to be his son.”

“Of course, he was a hero.” The ‘was’ doesn’t escape Castiel’s attention, but as it turns out he doesn’t have to ask. “He died when Sam and I were kids.”

“Sam is your brother.” 

Dean nods, eyes glued to the sheet again like there’s a limit to how much of himself he can bare at once and his eyes would be pushing it. “He’s at Stanford now, studying to be a lawyer.” A choked half-laugh punches out of him and fills the space between them. “He always was the smart one, you know? I swear he was doing my Algebra homework when he was still in elementary school.” He doesn’t know what to say to that, so he doesn’t say anything, taking to stare at the ceiling and the way it’s angled up into a pyramid, and the cobwebs clinging to the corners of the rafters that are in desperate need of some dusting, he tells Dean this offhandedly only to receive a snort in reply. “I’m not here enough for it to even matter, man.”

He doesn’t know at what point he decided to stop hating Dean, probably around the same time Dean started treating him like a human being. And it’s really a new level of fucked up that he’s here lying on a mattress with a man that’s likely killed people and tortured ten times as many. That he’s having a conversation with this same man without insults or malice or threats of any kind, that it’s even sort of nice. That he’s been sliced into six ways from Sunday, and stitched back together by that same man with an amount of care and gentleness that would rival most certified nurses. That if he lets his thoughts go long enough they end up imagining what he looks like beneath all the clothes and walls and rage. That he wants to know him, what makes him tick, what makes him laugh, and what makes him giddy. It’s all fucking ridiculous and stupid and probably has something to do with his lack of a father figure and his self-depreciating, masochistic nature his siblings have always warned him about. Or the blood loss and drugs. Probably a little of both. He wonders if this is another torture device devised by the two of them.

“Then where do you live?”

Dean tenses up fractionally and shrugs, “Wherever he needs me to, mostly.” 

“But this one is your favorite.”

It causes the tiniest smile to curve his lips, like the break of sunlight through a cluster of storm clouds. “Yeah, I—it was my reward. Sort of. After Sam left for college, I didn’t have an excuse to give him to let me stay there anymore, he let me build this for not putting up a fight, I guess.” 

And suddenly his affection for the places makes so much sense, the care that went into every board of the floors, every stone of the fireplace, the way the furniture is old and worn but deliberate and cared for in a way. He’d built an escape to replace a brother he likely never saw and home that had been ripped away from him. Not so much an escape anymore though, Castiel realizes. He doesn’t apologize for taking that from Dean, because it isn’t Castiel's fault, but he feels remorse clench in his gut for the loss. 

There’s no particular reason he says what he does next, no agenda, just that he wants to even the playing field, offer over his own escape for the taking. “When we were kids, Anna and I used to pretend we were orphans,” Castiel says, “we had this fort we built in the backyard, and we’d pack up this ridiculous little sack lunch in one of our shirts and hide there. Anna is the oldest so she always got pretend to have stolen the food from somewhere because she said homeless orphans wouldn’t be able to afford food, and I’d always have to go pick flowers to decorate with so our fort wouldn’t be boring. Sometimes we would be out there for hours, just eating our sandwiches, picking flowers, and playing in the dirt, and I remember we always had so much fun. I don’t know why we did that.” The fire pops across the room, deafening in the silence of the room. But Castiel can feel Dean’s gaze on him like a physical touch. 

The bed dips, squeaking in protest as Dean lifts himself up and off of it. Castiel eyes him curiously, watching the hand Dean drags roughly through his hair and the way the other joins it to clamp behind his neck as he paces the floor. Castiel’s afraid Dean might just wear a groove into the floor which would be a real shame considering the obvious effort that went into the woodwork. But Dean stops abruptly, right as Castiel’s about to warn him against it, and breathes a barely audible, “Fuck.”

“Dean?”

“Fuck,” he says again, louder and solid, determined. “ _Fuck_ , Cas.” He slumps back against the wall, rubbing the heel of his palms into his eyes and down his face, with a resigned sigh. “I’m getting you out of here.”

Castiel stares wide-eyed and blank at Dean for several moments, allowing the words to sink in and gain meaning. The longer he contemplates them the more foreign they become, though, until he’s certain he must have heard Dean wrong. “What did you say?”

Lines have formed in Dean’s forehead, his eyebrows drawn in and furrowed, his lips pinched down in the corners. “I’m—shit, Cas. I’m going to get you out of here okay? Alastair won’t be back for a few hours still, and he won’t be expecting this,” he says, eyes bright and fierce. “Can you walk?—No, of course you can’t walk. I’ll carry you; you can lay down in the backseat.”

His whole body is thrumming, pulsing with fear and incredulity and hope, but there’s also anger and it’s that emotion that takes forefront in his mind. “That’s not fucking funny.”

“Did you _want_ to stay here? ‘Cause I was under the impression—”

“No!” Castiel makes to sit up and regrets it, sitting back down against the mattress with a little groan and a clinching of his jaw. “No, I don’t want—are you being serious? This is an honest offer?”

“Because I’d suggest risking both of our lives to that sadistic bastard, as a joke? Yes, I’m fucking serious.”

He doesn’t have anything to say to that, stuck on the mantra of _homehomehome_ in his head. Home with his bed and his clothes, with his shower and the refrigerator full of food, and his Sunday paper that he never actually reads and only brings in so the neighbors can’t take it. Castiel wants it all so bad that it aches like a physical wound in his chest, and he’s ready to leap at the chance, anything to be one step closer to the reality he left behind what feels like eons, but was really only a day and half, ago. But then something occurs to him, something he doesn’t want to ask about. Doesn’t want to mention, because he’s so close to _homehomehome_. So close to freedom. And what does anything else matter? Why should he care if he can just have this? This is his life and he’s allowed to be selfish about it, encouraged too even. And he’s going to, just this once he’s going to only think of himself. He is. Only, his mouth opens without his permission and the words, “what about your brother?” come tumbling out of it. 

Dean isn’t perturbed though, isn’t retracting the proposal and calling it quits, isn’t fazed by the question at all. “We have to get to him before Alastair does. When he realizes we’ve left, it’s the first place he’ll go,” he says, pushing off the wall. The duffel bag makes a heavy clanking sound when Dean sets it down on the bed and riffles through it to produce a small stack of clothing, and Castiel wonders how many weapons he carries around with him. “These might be a little big, but they’re going to have to work for now.” 

It’s funny how much more like himself again he feels by the prospect of clothing. There’s absolutely no way he can pull them on himself though, not without jostling his stitches, so Dean helps: tugging the shirt over his head and lifting his torso far enough off the bed for Castiel to put his arms through and wrestle it down over his stomach, following suit with the jeans that are tugged up Castiel’s legs with surprisingly quick efficiently. Dean’s hands pause mid-fasten, and he’s smirking up at Castiel from his crouch at the foot of the bed in a way he’s become familiarized with by now. “I’ve never put anyone’s pants _on_ before.” He almost laughs at the obvious attempt to ease the tension, feels it rumbling in his chest, but is suddenly reminded of all the many reasons and circumstances that may have required Dean to remove someone’s pants to begin with. It’s not the plentiful amounts of voluntary sex a man as attractive as Dean would likely have that makes him flinch. His head is filled with images of children, young men and women, mother, fathers, and innocents flayed open, screaming. Of Alastair’s “boys” that Dean is probably more than acquainted with one way or another. All by those skilled hands. By those slim, calloused fingers currently tugging at his waistband.

The recoil doesn’t go unnoticed. Dean draws back so fast that Castiel almost doesn’t see him move, like a fire has been lit beneath him, only put out once he’s a safe five feet away. With something mumbled about packing up the car, he retreats from the room, promising to be back in soon. Castiel doesn’t have the energy to shout back after him.

***

Castiel doesn’t know how many hours they drive in absolute, perfect silence; he spends most of the time drifting in and out of consciousness from his place in the backseat of the Impala while Dean drives. It’s not an awkward silence, really. From the clusters of moments he spends awake, he gathers that it’s a tense one—filled with unspoken words and apologies that can’t change the past or add up to very much in the end for either of them. For now it can all wait. For now, he aches down into his bones and a twist in the wrong direction sends fire searing over his skin, cutting into his muscles. For now, he has questions and demands and unorganized contemplations that he needs to arrange and puzzle out before muddling it up again with anything Dean might say. For now, Castiel needs to rest. So that’s what he does.

***

Sleep clings to him like a fur coat: thick, hot, and heavy even after the initial shrug-off. He can still feel the frigid bite of Hellfire, the fatigue in the phantom wings he’d beat against the endless night in his pursuit of _upupup_ for what had felt like an eternity—a concept that his dream self had understood with startling clarity. 

As the fog lifts, the tingling in his arms recedes—a reminder of the mangled mockery of a human soul he had held as it had clutched at him screaming in anger or fear or pain or a mixture of the three, nails digging into Castiel’s flesh like the razor he had wielded before. He still feels the dull ache in his jaw from where it had clinched against the burning of his grace and the blackening of his body with Hell’s taint, the lines between dream and reality having blurred dangerously at some point while he slept. 

Sunlight streams into the car through the windows, painting the backs of his eyelids shades of red and orange, and he can only think of the pinprick of light that had spurred him on as he flew and the way it had grown larger and larger, the pure elation singing in every molecule of his being as he finally spouted free of the constricting darkness and into the warmth of the pale blue sky with his unconscious ward safely in the confines of his arms. Words resonate in his mind like an extension of himself; he can still feel them vibrating through him, singing out of his mouth with enough power to shake the earth and cause even the most menacing of demons to cower. All of heaven had rejoiced with their voices raised and their graces alight with bliss and thanks, but none so much as Castiel’s. 

Even after the sleep has seeped completely from his bones into the fabric beneath him, and the last of the dream sensations have melted away into a fuzzy, unrecognizable jumble in the back of his mind, those words still ring true. Four words, clear as a bell: _Dean Winchester is saved._

He doesn’t notice that the car has stopped until Dean speaks— the first time in at least six hours—twisted around in his seat to face him, “What do you want?” It takes Castiel a little longer than he’d like to admit to realize that they’re at a drive-thru, a McDonald’s more specifically. “You need to eat something or you’re not even going to begin to heal.” It occurs to him that the dull ache in his stomach is more likely from hunger than anything Alastair had done. Why his stomach couldn’t have just growled like a normal stomach and _told_ him that, he doesn’t know.

A cheeseburger and a carton of fries are passed to him a few minutes later once they’ve made it through the line and are back on the road. Castiel props himself up with a wince and watches as Dean tears into his food with an appreciative little moan. He feels like he should say something. His stomach is turning itself inside-out trying to reach the food in his hands but he can’t force his eyes to stray from Dean and the wrinkles etched at the corner of his eye, out of place on a face so young. The more he looks, the more he notices how tired that face looks. A face that’s missed more than one good night’s sleep, a face that’s missed years of them, a decade of them, a lifetime of them. He’s staring, he knows, but he can bring himself to stop; Dean has noticed by now, keeps glancing at Castiel out of the corner every so often but doesn’t say anything. Like maybe he wants to know what it is that Castiel sees, but is afraid to know at the same time so he doesn’t ask. Castiel honestly doesn’t know whether the answer to that would put Dean at ease or not so he doesn’t voice the thoughts running around in his head without further prompting. 

“Food’s going to get cold,” Dean says, gruff, uncomfortable. Castiel realizes that this is him asking, hoping that maybe the monster he sees in the mirror isn’t beyond redemption. Because Castiel knows that voice, knows the premature wrinkles, and that eternally tired face, is intimately familiar with them. He remembers avoiding mirrors for weeks on end and hoping that someone from his unit would come along and tell him that it wasn’t his fault, that war was full of casualties, that they had to die. It never mattered how many he saved, or how many schools he had a part in building, it only mattered that there were children without fathers or mother, wives without husbands or husbands without wives, and parents without sons or daughters and at the end of the day, he did that. He’s to blame. 

So Castiel shifts his gaze to the mirror where Dean’s eyes are looking right back, eats a fry and says, “Thanks for this,” with a shake of the red box. It’s not forgiveness, not by a long shot, but it’s a start. Dean smiles at him—a rigid, fragile little thing—and turns his attention back to the road. Castiel thinks maybe he looks a little lighter.


	3. 3

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I'm so sorry this took forever, I've been swamped! Also, it's a tad bit shorter than the other chapters, but I'll be away from my computer this weekend and I wanted to put this out before I did. So. Enjoy?

He looks deceptively small in the rearview mirror, curled in on himself as best as he can without causing unnecessary pain, his dark hair mussed and clumped in places along his hairline where blood has dried. And it’s baffling that even like this he looks defiant and strong, ready to spring at any given moment, a soldier that hasn’t quite returned from the battlefield. He’s sleeping, but not peacefully. His eyebrows are furrowed down over the bridge of his nose, his hands are tight fists against his belly, and his mouth is turned down into a tight frown that affects Dean more than he thinks it should. He has the inappropriate urge to crawl into the backseat and wrap Castiel up in his warmth until the lines in his face smooth out, content and serene. He doesn’t, of course, but the fact that he thinks about it at all is trouble enough.

The road is blessedly free of traffic, all empty black pavement lit up in the beam of his headlights, but even so he’s not going to make it to Palo Alto tonight—lucky if he makes it halfway. Were he making this trip alone, he’d drive the thirty-six hours straight there no problem, he’s gone longer stretches of time without sleep and really it’s a small sacrifice for a brother safe and sound. But he’s not alone, Castiel needs a bed for a few solid hours and food, and if he’s already stopping, some sleep would be good for Dean as well. He decides he’ll stop at a motel outside of Kansas City half an hour away and leave in the morning before sunrise.

For once he thanks god that he knows Alastair so well, knows him intimately enough to be a hundred percent certain that he won’t take a plane and beat them to Sam because the idea of humans in the sky puts that promise of razorblades and pain filled sneer on his face—Dean suspects it’s fear more than anything else— that he probably didn’t come back to find the cabin deserted until just before nightfall because he loves the way anticipation makes his victims sweat and tremor and wail before he’s even touched them. They have time, not much, but enough. Now, if Dean can just convince his heart of that so it’ll stop bruising his ribs with every rabbit-fast thump. He can hear the rush of it in his ears— too loud, too fast— in the silence of the Impala, but he doesn’t turn on the radio or stick in a tape to balance it out like he normally would. He doesn’t know why, it just feels wrong somehow, out of place. So he drives to the sound of his pulse and Castiel’s labored breathing like an unfinished melody until his exit looms up on him and signals a pause in their journey. 

There aren’t any rooms left with two queen beds, which the man behind the desk informs him of with a sadistic glint in his eyes and a smirk. Dean’s not wasting time driving around to find a new motel, though, so he takes the offered room with the one bed and resolves to make do with the promise of a sizable chair.

Castiel wakes with a start, lurching into a sitting position with a firm, almost painful grip on Dean’s retreating wrist. It takes a moment for him to register his surroundings; Dean can see the second he does by the widening of his eyes and the way they flicker from the open door, to his hand on Dean, and back again, suspicious and assessing. He doesn’t try to pull out of Castiel’s bruising hold just yet; he’s earned his distrust. “I figured we could use a couple hours of sleep in a bed. Unless you’d rather stay in the car, in which case, be my guest.” He shouldn’t think it’s endearing how those blue eyes narrow and dart around he Impala like he’s actually considering the alternative. Maybe he is, but in the end Castiel winds up pressed into Dean’s side—he refuses to be carried around like a child and Dean doesn’t insist because he’s nobody’s fucking keeper—as they make their way slowly but surely into the room. 

The chair is _not_ ‘sizable.’ It’s a pitifully tiny thing, old and worn-out, and even if its faded puke color doesn’t ward him off, the fact that it doesn’t even look sturdy enough to support his duffel bag does the job pretty well. Castiel doesn’t spare it a glance, doesn’t pause to take in the room at all before dropping down on the edge of the mattress and shrugging off his borrowed jacket as soon as they’re inside; the black boots follow soon after, then he sets a penetrating gaze firmly on Dean’s face. It’s disconcerting to have so much focus narrowed in on him at one time. He doesn’t know what Castiel is looking for, can’t even fathom a list of possibilities because it’s not a warning to mark his claim on the bed, it’s not suspicion or anger or curiosity. It’s just this _look_ , this imploring, soul-searching stare with Castiel’s head tilted ever so slightly to the left, and Dean can’t look away even if that’s all he can think about right now— _quick before he sees what you are_ —because to do so would feel a lot like surrender, a lot like losing a war even if he doesn’t know what’s being fought for or against. And then Castiel nods, a curt, barely-there shift of his head, but Dean feels like the world has been lifted from his shoulders. 

“I need a shower,” Castiel says, and Dean knows what he’s asking, because there’s absolutely no way he could hold himself up well enough to get clean without help.

He tosses his jacket over the arm of the sorry excuse for a chair in the corner. “Probably be easier if you took a bath.” When Castiel’s fingers begin tugging at the waistband of his jeans, Dean takes it as an affirmative and a sign to get out right this very minute; he owes Castiel privacy at the very least. 

The water warms quickly, and as he puts the stopper into the drain he tries very hard to pretend he’s not running a bath for another human being. Monster or not, he has a reputation to uphold. At least there aren’t any bubbles involved. He cringes a little at that thought. “I’ll need you to get my back.” 

Castiel’s body is a mass of stitches and blood clotted bandages when he steps naked into the small bathroom, from his cheek down to the puncture wounds on his feet that Alastair had thought were full of symbolic irony. Dean has identical ones that he can suddenly feel as fresh as the day he got them. Alastair had laughed when he drove the nails in, taunted him and offered him freedom for a price— _Sammy’s little savior aren’t you, Dean? Think he would do the same for you? Think you’re saving any of them by resisting?_ —but left his hands unharmed to maintain maximum price value. There’s a chance Castiel wouldn’t have come off similarly unscathed, and the thought makes Dean’s stomach roll with nausea he hasn’t felt since he was sixteen years old. 

He helps remove the bandages, checking for signs of infection and making sure the stitches are secure, and doesn’t wince when Castiel flinches away from his hands sometimes. The wounds are red and swollen and angry looking, scabbed over in places and bleeding in others where blood had dried to the bandages and reopened when they were removed, but they look good considering. For one revolting moment Dean looks at them and thinks of the ways he could have done it better, ways he had learned to hurt that didn’t heal up so easily, ways that Alastair had never even dreamt of. He draws back so fast it gives him vertigo. “You’re good to go.” It comes out cracked and softer than he means it to be, but Castiel doesn’t seem to notice as he lowers himself gingerly into the bathtub, and lifts a dark eyebrow up at him. 

“Are you going to sit down or wash my back from there?” 

Dean rolls his eyes and drops to his knees. “Shut up or I’ll make you do it yourself.”

“No you won’t.” No, he won’t actually. He should, because he’s really the last person Castiel should be trusting right now with Dean’s brain jumping around from mother hen mode, to sex fiend, to sadistic psychopath, and back again without warning. But he takes the cheap bar of soap from Castiel anyway. This would probably work better with a wash cloth, but seeing as how he doesn’t have one, Dean lathers up the little white bar and passes it gently over the tender skin. 

Given the state of his front, Castiel’s back is relatively unscathed. There are bruises where he’d bucked against the wall or Alastair had shoved him back with too much force and broke the skin around his shoulder blades. The majority of the damage ends somewhere around Castiel’s ribs, though, only reaching around to his back a few inches—not for any other reason but that Alastair hadn’t wanted to go through the trouble of turning Castiel around to get to the other side of him. Dean’s fingernail scrapes against a jagged cut along his bottom rib, and a hiss cuts through the silence that’s settles between them. He settles a hand on a cold, unmarred shoulder and murmurs an apology. If he thinks he feels Castiel lean into the touch, well, it’s probably just sleep deprivation. 

Once his back is clean and the bathwater has turned a clouded ruddy color, Dean hands the soap back and takes a seat on the closed toilet lid. He should probably leave and leave the rest to Castiel, but he’s still worse for the wear and Dean feels like it’s his responsibility to make sure the guy doesn’t do something to hurt himself which is really, entirely likely. 

Eyes are burning into the side of his face like hot iron, he’s not so lost in thought that he can’t feel them, but he doesn’t turn to meet them right away. There’s just something about the way Castiel looks at people that Dean can’t face just yet—like he sees more than their skin and their clothes and their bodies and the words their mouths move to make, like he sees their thoughts and desires and the nightmares that keep them awake at night, like he sees their _souls_. It was the very first thing he’d noticed when Castiel had woken up that first time, even dazed and coming off the drugs he had looked clear through Dean like no one ever had before. Alastair had seen it too—Dean saw the way his hands had twitched with the urge gouge his eyes out, the itch to sew them shut—and took it out on his body, dealing out punishment with every flick of the weapon in his hand like that would ward him against it. At the time, Dean had almost been envious of the way torturing Castiel came so easy to him like it hadn’t to Dean, the way he could just block out those eyes and that stare and carry on, the way it hadn’t made him sick to his stomach with guilt and sorrow and innate _wrongness_. 

It had scared him then; it scares him now. 

They don’t go away no matter how long he ignores them, and eventually he runs out of things with which to keep his eyes occupied. With a sigh he looks up and meets Castiel fixed, unblinking gaze. It’s just as arresting as he knew it would be, but there’s no judgment there, no suspicion or curiosity. Castiel is just looking at him again. Dean fights an urge to blush that he thought had died more than a decade ago. 

“Thank you,” he says. Just like that: unloaded, simple. Dean doesn’t know what to say, because anything he has done for Castiel is because he owes him, he’s obligated to because this is his fault, and he doesn’t  
understand how that little detail could have slipped Cas’ attention at any point in time. He settles with a ‘don’t mention it’ because it’s harmless enough, and helps Castiel wash his hair when he’s asked to, eyes boring into him all the while. 

The towels are just about as pathetic as everything else in the room. They aren’t long enough to fit around Castiel’s slim waist, so Dean takes one and dries his back while Cas takes care of the rest himself. His skin is warm through the cheap cloth. Dean finds himself letting his hands linger too long there, soaking it up like a flower to the sun after a storm. His hand looks so out of place resting there between Castiel’s shoulder blades, and he has the irrational fear that he’ll stain him, leave a mark and ruin him a little more if he leaves it there. He can’t bring himself to move it though—he can feel every breath Castiel takes this way and it’s oddly calming—which is why Dean knows the exact moment he begins to ready himself to speak before the words ever form on his lips. Muscles shift under his palm and the breathing comes to a slow stop as Castiel inhales and holds it. He turns, making Dean’s hand fall away with the movement, and suddenly they’re inches from each other’s face and Castiel’s eyes are so goddamned _blue_. 

“I don’t blame you, Dean.”

And that doesn’t compute. Dean stands there and looks at him, tries to decipher what’s going on in that alien brain of his, but he’s not the one with the gift for soul-searching so his hunt turns up empty. “What the hell are you talking about?”

“I know that right now you’re blaming yourself for every bad thing that’s ever happened in the world, and I want you to know that I don’t agree with you.” A hand swiftly covers his mouth before Dean can say, in explicit detail, what he thinks about that. “I’m not saying you’re not at fault. I’m saying that while you aren’t innocent, anyone put in your situation would have done the same. And if we’re going to continue traveling together for any period of time, I’m going to need you to understand that, because I can’t handle you treating me like I’m made of glass and you’re a big, bad reformed hammer with a guilty conscious resisting the urge to smash me.”

Castiel takes his hand away with a pointedly look and backs away. “Just one thing, Cas.”

“Of course.”

“You fucking suck at metaphors.” Castiel punches him.

 

As it turns out, every pizza joint within delivering distance is closed for the night so Dean orders Chinese. It doesn’t take as long as he expects, but the delivery guy snatches the bills from his hands with a scowl and something about hoping that he chokes. Dean decides that he probably deserves it for ordering ten minutes before they closed. Someone probably spit in it. Not that it really matters to him one way or another, his stomach is eating itself from the inside out and the egg rolls smell like heaven through the creased paper bag. At this point, he doesn’t care if someone threw it on the ground and stomped on it first. Well, he’d probably care a little bit, but it’s an unlikely situation so he doesn’t dwell on it for long, concentrating on getting back inside to stuff his face instead.  
Castiel is a lump of faded, puce blankets in the middle of the bed with only a tuft of messy, damp hair sticking out of the top of his makeshift cocoon. Dean fights back a grin and moves to wave the bag over where he figures the lumps’ nose might be. “Hey, Cas.”

A pause and then, “Is that food?” Slim fingers creep out over the edge of the blanket and pull it down just the tiniest bit so that Castiel can peek out at his surroundings. 

He smirks and shrugs, sitting down on the edge of the bed as he fishes through the bag. “Could be. Scoot over.” Castiel does so without complaint, making room for Dean to lounge back against the headboard, and asks him if he has plans to share or let it get cold in his lap. “If you’re going to be a little bitch about it, maybe I’ll just eat it by myself,” he says. It loses some of its edge when he immediately follows with handing Castiel a plastic fork, removing the containers from the bag, and lining them up between the two of them, though. Castiel’s eyes shift longingly to the small grease-stained sack of egg rolls in his hands, and it’s really too much for Dean to handle. He rolls his eyes and tosses it across the gap into the lap of the pitiful, sulking man propped up next to him. “Chill. I ordered four, grab two.” The smile he earns with that nearly has him offering over his egg rolls too, that is, until he remembers that he’s a grown, twenty-eight year old man, _not_ a prepubescent girl with a crush, but whatever.

“When are we leaving in the morning?” Castiel asks around a bite of egg roll. 

“I thought around four thirty, maybe five. We still have another full day’s drive before we get to Palo Alto so I figured we should probably get an early start.” Well, that and that fact that he’d like to get to his brother still in one  
piece, but he leaves the bit to be inferred. 

“We could take turns driving if you’d—” Dean cuts him off with a proclamation of various forms of 'no,' because he’s not trusting an almost-cripple to drive his baby no matter how convincing his pout is. “Ass.” He doesn’t argue with that. 

In all honesty, Dean can’t remember the last time he sat down and ate a meal with someone, and it’s nice in a way he hadn’t thought it could be. They’re not really saying much—the TV isn’t even on for background noise—but no one’s screaming or running, there’s no blood to clean up, no hands to secure to the closest sturdy fixture. The food is good, the air between them is the clearest it’s ever been, and he isn’t even bothered when Castiel steals the last of the Lo Mein. It feels horribly domestic, which is ridiculous because there’s absolutely nothing domestic or normal about the situation they’re in right now, and he feels like the biggest prick on the face of the earth for enjoying a single second of this mess, especially with Castiel's wounds staring him straight in the face. Feeling guilty doesn’t negate the truth of it, though.

“Trade you?” As a general rule, Dean chooses beef over chicken every time. The container of sweet and sour chicken being pushed at him for the remainder of his beef and broccoli—heavy on the beef—is no exception. He snorts and kicks his boots off onto the floor.

“Not a snowball’s chance in hell,” he says.

“It’s only fair, you ate all of the fried rice.” And that’s a valid argument and everything, but Dean is having far too much fun with that putout, indignant puppy look right now to even consider giving in. 

“Nope.” White flashes through his line of sight and spears a piece of meat before he can put up the proper defenses to stop it. Castiel grins smugly at him, humming contentedly as he chews a mouthful of stolen food. As far as Dean can tell, he’s practically begging for it. 

Without taking his eyes off of Castiel, he sets his plate on the ground—far away from those thieving hands—and inches in ever so slowly, watching as Castiel’s breath comes a little faster and his eyes dart over Dean’s face. “Didn’t your momma ever teach you it’s not nice to steal, Cas?” And he might be cheating a little when looms in too close with his gaze fixed obviously on Castiel’s plump, chapped mouth. Should probably feel guilty about the audible swallow that has nothing to do with food when Dean lets his palm settle on Castiel’s knee and slide up the closer he gets. And he should definitely, without a doubt repent later for the way those eyelids flutter closed when he lets his lips drag across Castiel’s cheekbone and linger at his ear. “Payback’s a bitch.” Dean snatches the cartoon out of his lap and leaps back over to his own side of the bed before Cas even has a chance to open his eyes, and even though he should be feeling guilty for all those things, he really, _really_ doesn’t. “Say you’re sorry and I’ll give it back,” he says. And, hey, what do you know?—the chicken is actually pretty good. 

“You are the most annoying person I have ever met in my entire life,” Castiel says, sort of winded and drawn out like it’s some kind of revelation he’s having over there. And Dean doesn’t want to think about the way that makes his heart beat a little faster, so he eats another piece of chicken pointedly.

“And by annoying you mean endearing? Because otherwise, really not helping your case here, buddy.”

“No, I definitely meant annoying. Or perhaps irritating. Obnoxious. Insufferable. Frustrating. Aggra—”

“Yeah! Okay, got the picture, thanks. Here’s your damn food.” He’s not sulking. He’s definitely not doing that, because Dean Winchester doesn’t sulk, and so what if Castiel doesn’t like him? It’s not like he really has any reason to—Dean knows that, he does. It just stings a little because for the briefest of moments he’d actually forgotten that they weren’t just two guys squabbling over Chinese in a hotel room somewhere, and reality hits him like driving eighty miles an hour into a brick wall. He really isn’t all that hungry anymore. “I’m going to get some sleep, you can have the rest of this if you want it.” There were only two pillows on the bed— both flat and discolored—and no extra blankets but he’d slept worse places than the floor so he grabbed one of the pillows and tossed it to the ground.

“What are you doing?” The corners of his lips are drawn down into a frown that is accented by the dip in his eyebrows; Dean doesn’t understand what there is to be confused about, he’d thought he’d been pretty clear before. Then his expression clears and he shakes his head with the faintest smile that says Dean is the biggest moron he’s ever met in his life, which may or may not be true but really has nothing to do with what they’re talking about right now. “Dean, pick up that pillow and get in the damn bed.” Who is he to argue with that kind of order, really? 

Their trash is piled up on a table on the other side of the room, their pants and shoes discarded on the floor at either side of the bed, and the lights turned off as they settle in for their few precious hours of sleep. Dean insists on the side closest to the door—a habit he picked up as a child staying in motel with Sam and his dad—and Castiel doesn’t fight him on it for which he’s relieved. The air suddenly seems thicker than it had before, like the darkness in the room had crossed some unspoken boundary. 

Eventually their breaths slow and steady into twin semblances of sleep, but years of training tell him that Castiel’s are just that—semblances: well-versed and potentially undetectable mockeries by a trained soldier. It’s too hot, too crowded, even though they aren’t close to touching with Castiel sticking firmly to his side of the bed and Dean doing the same, and he wants out. He could sleep in the car, he thinks, but doesn’t get very far with that thought before Castiel turns his head to face Dean. “Why did you save me? After all this time, after Sam was safe, after everything, why me?”

The truth is that he doesn’t have a goddamned clue. He’s thought about it so hard his head hurts, but he doesn’t have an answer, because there wasn’t any defining moment or quality that did it. There’s only a collection of tiny things that got inside his head and took up residence until they were all that was left. He can’t say it’s because he has a fucking weird name and doesn’t understand movie references like most normal people. He can’t say it’s that terrifying way he looks into people and breaks them open without even trying. He can’t say it’s because of the way his mouth doesn’t know how to stop running when faced with one of the most dangerous men on the planet, and how stubborn is ninety-nine percent of his personality and cowardice isn’t even in his vocabulary. He can’t say it has to do with how he says things like he means them and asks questions because he cares to know the answer. He can’t say it’s because of how Alastair himself couldn’t break him enough to sell out his sister—Dean knows that he isn’t as ignorant as he pretends. He can’t say any of those things, because he didn’t take Castiel away for any of those reasons, he did it for all of them, and how can he explain that when he doesn’t understand it himself? 

Dean looks up at the water stained ceiling and says, “I don’t know.”


End file.
